The Province of Ontario passed legislation that changes laws regarding employee overtime effective March 1.

All business operating in Ontario should understand these new requirements.

The following is a letter that my employment law colleague – Lorrie Por – sent to clients to explain the changes.

RE: Bill 63

Bill 63, which amends the Employment Standards Act, 2000, is coming into force on March 1, 2005. I felt I should advise my clients of these changes. This Bill deals with 2 main issues:

1. The Hours of Work issue; and

2. Averaging of Overtime Issue

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DAVID CANTON – For the London Free Press – March 12, 2005

Read this on Canoe

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding a California grade school’s decision to implement an RFID student tracking program. The debate is whether this use of RFID technology is a great security measure or a creepy intrusion of privacy.

Brittan elementary school entered into an agreement with a company that developed the InClass RFID System, allowing testing of this application in its school.

Scanners were installed over doorways leading into classrooms, the cafeteria, etc., and the students were required to wear RFID-enabled identification badges around their necks. The information recorded by the scanner as a student passed under it was sent to a server in the school’s office and then to a teacher’s PDA, identifying the students that entered their classroom.

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Some of you may have seen the recent reports where the Harvard Business School systems were hacked into by applicants to see if they had been accepted. Harvard says they will deny admission to anyone that has done that.

Apparently someone discovered how to gain entry, then published the method for others to use.

Thanks to the Ernie the Attorney blog for pointing out a posting on Philip Greenspun’s Weblog that puts a spin on it other than the unethical hacker point of view.

In a post entitled Business Schools redefine hacking to ‘stuff a 7 year old could do.’ he suggests that it was such a simple flaw in the system, that it can hardly be called hacking.

Read the Ernie the Attorney post
Read the Philip Greenspun post

A letter to the editor posted on CNet (entitled Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor not a lawyer) following an article on a Microsoft patent dispute case poses an amusing (even if legally dubious) thought.

One cannot obtain a patent if there is prior art, i.e. if someone has already done what your are claiming in your patent.

The letter points out that prior art for many controversial technology patents can be found on Star Trek.

Read the CNet posting

I have written before about concerns over Canadian government proposals such as “lawful access”, and copyright reform.

Professor Geist wrote an article in the Toronto Star that addresses these concerns. He says:

Notwithstanding the Internet’s remarkable potential, there are dark clouds on the horizon. There are some who see a very different Internet. Theirs is an Internet with ubiquitous surveillance featuring real-time capabilities to monitor online activities. It is an Internet that views third party applications such as Vonage’s Voice-over-IP service as parasitic. It is an Internet in which virtually all content should come at a price, even when that content has been made freely available. It is an Internet that would seek to cut off subscriber access based on mere allegations of wrongdoing, without due process or oversight from a judge or jury.

He asks: Is this really what we want our Internet to be?

The answer is absolutely not!

Read the Toronto Star article

DAVID CANTON – For the London Free Press – May 5, 2005

Read this on Canoe

Microsoft’s anti-trust issues continue to make headlines. The European Commission’s decision against Microsoft last year was upheld by a court in December. That contrasts with a previous U.S. decision on the same issue in Microsoft’s favour.

The EC found Microsoft was abusive in using its Windows software monopoly to unfair advantage. It forced Microsoft to change its business practices and levied a fine of $613 million US.

The EC decided Microsoft must supply European users with an alternate version of Microsoft Windows that does not include Windows Media Player. This decision was meant to address competitive imbalances that result from Microsoft’s near monopoly on operating systems for desktop computers.

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A Globe and Mail article reports that DirecTV has sued 19 Canadians for their gray market activities to sell DirecTV service to Canadians.

Gray market refers to Canadians using a US address to sign up to get satellite TV service meant for Americans (or vice versa).

Read the Globe and Mail article

Read an earlier London Free Press article I wrote on the topic

Reinforcing my point from yesterday that we need to do better to protect information, is an entry by David Fraser in his PIPEDA and Canadian Privacy Law blawg referring to a Forrester Research report.

Forrester says companies underestimate the costs of security breaches in monetary terms, often as a direct result of reduced customer confidence.

Read David Fraser’s post

There have been a significant number of recent high profile privacy gaffs (data debacles?), including Bank of America, T-Mobile, Paris Hilton, ChoicePoint.

We – and by that I mean any person, business, or government that touches personal information in any way – must do a better job of keeping information secured, allow access only to those who rightfully need it, and keep only the bare minimum information necessary.

Security/privacy audits must be done for every process that might possibly touch personal information, including how it is backed up and disposed.

Consumer confidence is being eroded, and the risks of large scale fraud and identity theft are just too great.
And the concept of using passwords for access control is fundamentally flawed. It is in practice impossible to remember effective passwords. Biometrics is the answer – provided the methods used do not store biometric information in databases, which would be a recipe for disaster.

US commentators are now calling for wide reaching general privacy legislation. US Senate hearings are about to take place. Frankly, it is beyond me why the US has so far insisted on passing privacy legislation that affects only narrow business sectors. The Canadian PIPEDA legislation is far from perfect, but at least we have something in place.

Laws alone are not enough. We all need to step up to the bar and deal with this – whether for information in our control, or whether it is just insisting on high standards.

We expect banks to keep our money secure in their vaults with appropriate measures to protect it, and not give our money to others. We should insist on no less of those who have our information. Indeed, we should expect more – because unlike banks – we cannot always control who has our information.